Apparently the Left needs to be told that whether Trump is fat or skinny has no bearing on anything, and that their shameful pontificating about his weight only makes the Left look dumb. It gives the Right fuel for the fire to call out every hypocritical thing the Left has ever engaged in.

Speaking as a part of the Left, I have to say that we need not act like the bully in the White House. Yes, he makes fun of what people look like. Does that mean we need to? All of this call out about his weight (no matter what it might be) is ridiculous and gets us off track. It also has nothing to do with his “health,” because you can’t know anything about a person’s health by what they look like.

This sheer spectacle of nonsense just proves how much fat hate there is in the world, and how willing people are to go for the low hanging fruit. The Left is behaving no better than Trump and all the other bullies in the world. Fat or skinny, Trump is the same sh*thole he has always been, and it is corruption, incompetence, greed, violent misogyny, racism, and recklessness that should be a concern for all of us.

Dear Interwebs,
I’m tired of constantly debating women’s peoples’ bodies. I’m tired of it being the sole focus of so much conversation. I’m tired of “healthy” this and “unhealthy” that. I’m tired of “men want meat not bones” and “eww, gross, you are so fat!” I’m tired of all the health-nut trollers. And I’m even tired of trying to get the health-nut trollers to understand how they are not helpful. I’m tired of ranting about how fat is not the devil. I’m tired of all of the tired “debate” (*cough* yelling *cough*) about how obesity is the single biggest plague on society. I’m tired of having photo competitions to show who is sexiest—fat, skinny, fit, unfit, tall, short, round, normal bodied, differently bodied, tattooed, maimed, jaundiced, oompa-loompa-tanned, blonde, brown, lumpy, frumpy, dimpled, ab-rocking, make-overed, pierced, Barbie, grungy, blah blah blah, etc.—why can we NOT stop talking about bodies?!? Do we all have some form of body? Why yes, yes, we do. I think we can all pretty much agree on that. There are no brains in jars being pushed around on carts that I know of. Yes, our bodies are wonderful and amazing, but can’t we PLEASE PLEASE quit talking about them for five seconds?!? Every day it is a firestorm of shit about people are too fat, people are too thin, people are healthy, people look this way, people look that way, OMG Becky, LOOK AT HER BUTT!!!

Why are we all incessantly patrolling each and every body part of each other? Dude, it is sooooo out of control! Stop the madness! Calgon take me away! So, in an effort to alleviate some of this nonsense, here are a few examples of topics to discuss with your neighbor. You don’t have to discuss heavy world politics or anything (like anyone understands THAT anyway)! JUST SOMETHING ELSE, PLEASE! I’m going to try to make these topics as banal and non-controversial as possible.

Now, there’s a list of ten things that are rarely discussed on Facebook and the rest of the interwebs. I’m sure if you try hard enough, you can think of many more things to add to the list, and so can I. The next time you are tempted to post about weight loss/gain, your new healthy cleanse/diet/lifestyle, someone else’s (or your own) boobs, thighs, butt, flabby/not flabby arms, how someone is too skinny/fat/unhealthy/healthy/lazy/beautiful/ugly, how the world needs to be changed because people are too fat/skinny/unhealthy/healthy/blah de de blah, etc., well, just consult this list of banal topics. Now, I am not talking about eliminating critiques of culture/body culture all together, but if all you (or I) am going to add is blah blah blah GARBAGE, ill-conceived nonsense and old tired tropes to the conversation, PLEASE put down the keyboard and WALK, CRAWL, SCOOT, LEAVE, GO AWAY FROM the computer! Interwebs, you are just making me too tired to even stare at the screen for hours on end! How dare you!

Okay, so if you haven’t heard, Abercrombie & Fitch clothing is made of human assholes and excrement. Yes, you heard me right! Abercrombie & Fitch, who defended their NO PLUS SIZES policy by saying that they didn’t want uncool and fat people sporting their brand, is now going to carry some plus size clothing and accessories, because their stock has tanked. Let me just say to Abercrombie & Fitch, YOU CAN SUCK IT! I hope your company dies in the stinking ball of hate from which it was formed. Sure, there are other companies that also discriminate against fat people, but Abercrummy & Filth was very vocal about their hatred of us fatties and how we are not good enough to don their crappy wares. I would, of course, love to see all of the clothing companies that don’t include fatties in their agenda wiped off the planet, but I will settle first for the much belated death of Abercrummy & Filth.

This year is the 30th anniversary of the publishing of Shadow on a Tightrope by Aunt Lute Books, and there is a blog carnival this week for the book! I am so happy to be participating. I can’t think of a lot of books that have changed my life, but I would say that this one has. I was about 19 years old when I first picked up SOAT. I was bulimic and fat, and had always been told that being fat was the worst thing in the world to be. In high school I had starved myself down to a “normal” weight, but I gained back some of the weight by the time I was 19 when I was trying to starve myself again. I remember being in Seattle at Bailey Coy Books (now out of business) where I found the book, and later reading the book during my lunch break at the University Bookstore where I worked for a short time. I could not believe what I was reading! For one thing, there were these other fat people out there! Who knew?!? And some of them had endured horrendous surgeries that I didn’t know existed back then (which are all too common now). AND then they were saying that fatness wasn’t the horrid devil wrapped in bacon strips that I had always been told it was! WHAT?!? Did I read that correctly? I didn’t know it at the time, but the book forever changed my outlook on fat and fat activism. Maybe not all at once, but it all stayed with me. It found a little space in my brain, and when everyone else and all of society screamed at me to be thin I remembered the words in SOAT. I remembered (for once) that this experience of being fat was not something I had to do alone, and even though I didn’t stop the bulimia for years, and hated myself for being fat a lot, the messages from SOAT were there working their magic. And, I really think it was like magic that these words in a book could so profoundly alter my view of the world. Years later I stopped the bulimia, and I now consider myself to be a fat activist of sorts, and SOAT is still helping me to figure out how to live with my body and how to live with a world that hates my body. I am forever indebted to Aunt Lute and all of the people who put the book together. I hope that this book can get in the hands of more fat people just so they know that it doesn’t have to be like this, they don’t have to hate themselves, and they aren’t alone.

I made this skirt from scratch! My first ever! Not so fashionable for some people, but I think it is funny and cute! hehe The front has gnomes in white and the back has gnomes in green. Along the bottom are little checkered bows. :) I just sort of eyeballed the whole thing, so I was really nervous it wouldn’t work or fit, but it did! Yay! :) I did make the matching scarf a few weeks ago before I decided to make the skirt. :)

I love my new “Love Your Peaches” dress! I love the store. I can’t always afford it, but I got this on sale. Yippee! She carries sizes 1x to 6x and can make slight alterations to the clothing to fit your needs! :) Here’s the link: http://www.loveyourpeaches.com/ . If you get the chance, feel free to support her small business. She does a wonderful job and I hope she keeps making clothes for us chubb-chubbs! :) UPDATED: Thought I should add a photo with a close-up of the fabric. It is pretty cute fabric I think! :)

Imagine my surprise when I got something in the mail that I didn’t even order! The pictured bracelet came from Ulla Popken for no reason at all! How nice! And I love what it says! The scarf is from Simply Be, simply because I entered a photo of me wearing my favorite Joe Brown’s item! A big thank you to both companies for not only the items they gave me, but for catering to the plus size chubb-chubb girls like me! Without them I’d be naked!!!

I just wanted to tell you guys about this awesome t-shirt place that has t-shirts in sizes small to 5XL. They have all sorts of cute/funny t-shirts. I just got this one and I love it! Go to: http://dpcted.com/ and support a business that is nice to fat people, pierced people, tattooed people, and bearded people (among others).

I thought I’d do a little mental health update, since it has been quite some time since I’ve blogged about my overall mental health. As some of you dear readers may know, I have schizophrenia. I first had issues with it when I was about 15. My first hospitalization was when I was 16. Towards the end of 2000 I got mostly stabilized with my Haldol injections and Zoloft. I haven’t been in the hospital since then! Yay! Quite a long run I’ve had and I hope it continues! For quite some time I had problems getting things done, being motivated and feeling down…that sort of thing, even though I was mostly fine. I think it was last year that I started taking Abilify and it has made a HUGE difference! I’m still taking Zoloft, Buspar, Haldol and some non-psychiatric meds in addition to the Abilify, but the addition of the Abilify was great. I’m doing really pretty well these days. Sometimes I have anxiety, although I think it might generally be related to performance issues with school. I also tried taking Topamax to help with weight loss, but I thought it might be making me stupid and giving me more anxiety, so I quit taking it. I think overall, the Topamax was not helping. It seemed like I was becoming less motivated and more sad with it. I also had that bad anxiety day that I wrote about recently.

So, I think I was just hoping for a magic weightloss bullet with the Topamax. It didn’t work. Boo. I have lost about 90-100 pounds though which is good, but I still need to be less sedentary. I’m also a believer in fat acceptance, but of course it is hard to say that I never want to try to lose weight. I would be an even bigger believer in fat acceptance if I wasn’t actually fat I think!!! hahaha. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it is kind of true. I can accept the hell out of everyone’s fatness, but my own! lol.

Anyway, enough about fatness for now. What I want to say is that I’m doing well on the whole. My sleep patterns have improved with my sleep apnea machine, and while I’m not sleeping on any kind of normal schedule yet, I’m getting sleep every day and mostly at the same time! I still tend to be somewhat paranoid, but I’ve found that opening up with people over the years on the internet has really helped me to realize that I don’t need to be afraid of everyone in the world. I still have some delusional thoughts that blow through my brain now and then, but I consider them to be more of a slight annoyance than a big deal right now. But seriously, it is because of the medicine. If I wasn’t taking my meds, and doing so faithfully, I would be in and out of hospitals and massively psychotic. Some people don’t believe me, because I “seem so normal,” but I have to wonder what THAT means anyway? And, I don’t know, it seems like I should be insulted when people say that to me, but I’m not sure why I find it so insulting! I don’t necessarily want to be abnormal, even though I pretty much am, but I think it just bothers me that people attach a kind of value judgement to the term “normal” as if “normal” is superior. It is definitely easier to live in the world if you are “normal,” but it isn’t the only way to be in the world, that’s for sure. Normal is just such a peculiar word, no?

So, I’m doing fine. Some anxiety here and there, some weird thoughts here and there…a depressed mood now and then, but mostly just good. Which is nice. Thank you meds and thank you lucky stars! So, that’s my update after living with schizophrenia for 24 years. Wow! 24 years! Man am I getting old!!! LOL.

So, I had this long, black skirt that I rarely wear and I’ve been itching to use some of my fabric designs, so I decided to shorten my skirt a bit and add my fabric (http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/1125222) at the bottom of the skirt! For a total newbie, I think it turned out pretty well! I’m quite excited to wear my new skirt now!!! :) Yippee!!! :)

Like this:

If I listened to the world I would be dead, because I would know that in every way I should not exist and that I am a worthless piece of shit. People die trying NOT to be like me–fat, crazy, poor. People give up every bit of happiness so they don’t have to be a person like me and I know it. In one moment “friends” will say they love me and in the next moment they are trying their best to be everything I am not. People spend billions of dollars running away from fatness, and oh, you think they just hate their own fat or want to be “healthy.” No. It is pathological–the hate. It is palpable too. I can feel it, the way you can’t stand yourself, so you would do anything in the world to NOT be what I am. But it isn’t all about me. Of course not, but no one even considers how it might make me feel that the thing you cannot stand about yourself is a part of me. Honestly, you don’t get it. I’m sick of it. That people would rather starve themselves and/or their children than to have them end up like me. All human worth can now be counted on a fucking bathroom scale. Are you over or under the weight limit? Well, what’s your answer? Do you weigh the right amount to be considered a human? Or are you the plague. THE reason why the world is in turmoil. THE scapegoat for everything that is wrong in the world.

Because, it isn’t about health and wellness. Let’s be fucking honest.

Are you never going to get sick and die? Perhaps you think that there is a scale that will let you off the hook when it comes to disease and death. What about your capacity to cause misery for other people? Have you ever considered that? No.

Oh, I’m so proud of you for not eating. I’m so proud of you for being thin. I’m so proud of you for obsessing about your weight and the weight of those around you to the point of nausea. Because THAT’S WHAT MATTERS, isn’t it? Why does it pain you so much to be real? Admit that you hate your fat and you hate fat people and everything that is fat makes you cringe and you’d rather have people like me die. Why not admit it to yourself? Because you admit it to me every time you talk about another diet or another pound lost or another pair of skinny jeans and every time you buy into the diet industry and pray to god that you’ll just lose another ten pounds or keep those ten pounds from coming back. Because you aren’t even fucking fat! Or maybe you are. I don’t know and I don’t care. It is all the same anymore.

And, I know you don’t care about me, so I have to care for myself. I have to tune out the world and pretend I don’t hear your ranting and raving about “being healthy” and “being a better role model.” If I listened to you and everyone else I would be dead. I’d shoot myself in the head and end it all if I really really listened, because I would know that my worth was measured on your bathroom scale. How pathetic is that? That you measure worth on a bathroom scale? In case you don’t know, IT IS FUCKING PATHETIC!!!

It is fucking pathetic that I even have to waste a few of my precious brain cells thinking about this nonsense instead of something REAL or something IMPORTANT. My message to you and you and you and you: suck it up. Lose the weight or don’t. I really don’t care. Shut up about it already. You can suck your diets and surgeries and miracle cures and “health” reports and “nutrition facts” and blah de blah blah blah blah blah! Just suck it!

Like this:

I’ve been reading a lot about identity lately. First I was reading about identity for an art history class and then just for fun. I just finished reading Revolting Bodies: The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity by Kathleen LeBesco—great book by the way. Obviously from the title, the book was about identity. I’ve also been reading some bell hooks and some other stuff. And, what I’ve decided is that mostly I AM CONFUSED! I’m not confused in the way that someone can tell me who and what I am. I am confused in a way that I seem to have been confused all my life, but I don’t know, is it normal? For me it is.

What am I talking about? Well, okay, in talking about fat identity LeBesco actually discusses this kind of confusion. The confusion where I want to be all fat-positive all the time, but then there are times when I hate myself. There are times when I feel like I just*want*to*lose*weight, but I still want to be a fat activist! lol I want to be a fat activist as long as I can be a skinny fat activist—an ally and not a “victim.” I want to be out and proud about my mental illness, but then I feel like no one will ever want to date me, because they think I’m defective. But, who really thinks I’m defective? It seems like I do. Why do I feel like that? Am I defective? What would it even mean to be non-defective, because I’m not a machine! But then again, people DO think poorly of the mentally ill. It isn’t like most people would purposely pick a mentally ill person as a love interest, and WHAT IN THE WORLD would it mean for a non-mentally ill person to seek out a mentally ill person for a love interest?!?

I also wonder about the whole “health” aspect of being fat. Do I eat too much and the wrong things and not get enough exercise? Yes, yes, yes. So, it is my fault I’m fat. Why don’t I try to be healthier? Why would I reject wanting to be healthier? Because, obviously on some level I do reject it. Maybe not all of it is “my fault” of course. At least I don’t think so. Then I’m being too easy on myself. But why do I have to be perfect?

I’m similarly confused with my politics and my understanding of myself as female. I like being female and I hate it too. I want to be a feminist and at the same time I wonder how I can possibly be a feminist when I don’t support myself fully? Does being a feminist mean you pay for everything yourself? I used to think so, but it seems like I’m still mostly a feminist even though I live with my parents. Another thing is that I have doubts about going full throttle into things. Can I be a good feminist if I don’t go gung-ho? What if, god-forbid, I disagree with other feminists?!?

I’m like this in so many ways…one foot in the door the other out. I have this inner dialogue of contempt for the world and myself sometimes, but then I try to fight that a lot (other times not so much). I truly think that one of the reasons why I love Hello Kitty so much is that I can full-throttle love everything Hello Kitty without caring if it is right or wrong or true or false or up or down to love all things Hello Kitty. I know that sounds absurd, but I think it might be true. I don’t care if people think I’m weird or childish. I just love Hello Kitty! I don’t feel so free in other areas of my life. I try to be fat-positive, I try to stomp out mental illness stigma, I try to align my politics with things that I think are right, but it is mostly tempered. Even my educational goals are splintered. I can’t pick just one thing and get on with it, so I study as many things as I can.

What does this mean for my identity and how I construct it? It is kind of like I’m living in the margins of the margins. I’m marginalized by who I am, and then again I marginalize myself by thinking I’m not fully one thing or the other. I live in the ether, because I refuse or can’t choose to live on terra-firma. Is it easier to live in the ether? I suppose in ways it could be, but it really seems difficult at times. I sometimes desperately desire to say “I AM THIS!” and “THIS IS WHAT I’M ABOUT!” but I can never manage that. I want to know what I’m about. Don’t we all?

WHAT?!? Yes, it is true. They now make an even skinnier Barbie! Apparently she wasn’t thin enough, so they have flattened her out some more. It is okay with me, as long as they make a FAT BARBIE, which they never will do! It is hard to say how much Barbie really warps young minds, but I do think she has had some influence over generations of girls. There have been endless discussions about the body image of Barbie of course, but Barbie is only a part of what the issue is. While Americans get fatter, body image issues get more complex and the Hollywood image of beauty gets thinner and thinner. I guess I can’t be too surprised by Barbie’s new look, but did Barbie really have to go there?!? At least her boobs are smaller, but the dolls are seriously anorexic. Barbie was so thin and out of proportion before. What good could come of anorexic Barbie dolls I ask you?

It has been a long while since I’ve written about body acceptance. I sort of ran out of “steps” that I could think of. For me, it really is a process. I told my therapist that when it comes to weight, weightloss and size acceptance, I feel like I am walking on a balance beam. Not quite a tightrope, but still balancing nonetheless.

Over this past year quite a lot has changed. My blood sugar levels were elevated with an A1C level of 6.3, so my nurse practitioner qualified me as diabetic. She also did other blood work and discovered that I was really low in Vitamin D and that my thyroid was off (hypothyroidism ), so I started meds for those too. I decided that I was sick of people suggesting that I get a gastric bypass, and I felt like I really could be in better shape, so with the combo of meds for my thyroid and blood sugar, watching what I eat a little more, and getting a bit of exercise, I have lost some weight.

However, I still want to maintain my outlook as one of size-acceptance. I know it seems kind of weird to say I am for size-acceptance and still be trying to lose some weight. There really is no manual for this kind of thing, so I’m just working on it as best I can. I am taking steps to improve my health. I got my A1C level down to 5.3 (non-diabetic) so far and my other labs are looking better. I’m still taking meds, but I’m TRYING to take a bit better care of my body. I know that at my size I am not quite as healthy as I could be, but I also know that I am not going to starve myself and turn into a raging bulimic again to try to maintain and lose weight (well, I really hope not at any rate!!!).

But, it is hard in some respects, because when I do make some attempt to pay attention to what I am eating, all of those negative thoughts tend to come back to haunt me. Thoughts like if I eat something “bad” I am being a “bad” person. My therapist calls thoughts like that ANTS (automatic negative thoughts). You know, some months I might gain some weight or not lose weight, and I have to be okay with that.

As a person who has struggled with weight issues all of my life, it isn’t like losing weight is just a matter of calories in and calories out. It is a whole quilt of past experiences, thoughts and feelings related to weight and how I have dealt with things throughout my life as a fat person.

So, I feel like I’m in a process of understanding how to accept myself and my body while trying to take some steps to improve my health. For me, it is important to remember that at the end of the day, the whole world drifts away and what matters is how *I* feel and how *I* can function and accept my body in this life. So, maybe I want to lose some more weight, but I still eat. I still eat “bad” stuff and I’m not ever going to live on a diet of celery, that is for sure. I don’t want to give up my life and I don’t want to give up eating. I just want to live my life the best I can!

P.S. And just so you know I am not anywhere near skinny, I have posted a picture of myself that was taken a couple of days ago! lol

Well, not only am I a schizophrenic, but I’m a regular girl type. The kind of girl you all know. Which means that growing up I had regular girl problems (not that eating disorders are girl-only problems), not just schizophrenic girl problems. I was a chubby kid. And then as a teenager I went on a crash diet right around the time I first started losing touch with reality. I essentially starved myself so the weight would come off, but then, my hair started to come off too. And, eventually Continue Reading So…the Bulimia….

I don’t talk that much about my eating disordered self. My eating disordered self is like the proverbial (fat) skeleton in the closet! Okay, I know skeletons aren’t fat, but mine is! haha. People tend to think one of two things when you are fat. They either think that you don’t have an eating disorder and that you are just lazy, gluttonous, disgusting, and everything else along those lines…OR if they don’t think that, they think you DO have an eating disorder and the eating disorder is OBESITY period. So, basically Continue Reading The Fat Skeleton in the Closet…

Okay, you may wonder where I have been hiding. I’m sort of stymied for topics to write about right now and I have become addicted to America’s Next Top Model via YouTube uploads. Right now I am on Cycle 8. For me, watching ANTM is a complicated issue. Why? Because of the whole fat thing of course. How can I willingly spend Continue Reading Seriously Addicted to ANTM…

Well, it is that time of year: the holidays. I know that for people with eating disorders this can seem like the most terrible time of year. Whether you are facing holiday get-togethers with family, friends or co-workers or are just tempted by the food that is normally around, there is no doubt about it: if you have food issues these times will be hard. The thing I want to say about this is Continue Reading Steps To Body Acceptance #6…

Well, it is taking me a little more time to come up with steps for body acceptance, because I don’t want to end up repeating myself here. I have a couple of steps that I’ve been thinking about, but I can’t really remember them at the moment, so I’m going to go with one that really struck me today as I was watching someone’s video on youtube where they were talking about being skinny. Continue Reading Steps To Body Acceptance #5…

I don’t really know how many of these steps there are going to be. I kind of just write about them as they pop into my head even though I may have given them some more thought previously. Anyway, on with step number four. Step number four has to do with dealing with the people you may encounter in your life and the people who are important to you. Just like Continue Reading Steps To Body Acceptance #4…

Well, I hadn’t intended my blog to be only about fat things. hehe. I’ll get back to other stuff later. I just wanted to let you know that I FINALLY found a belt! I haven’t exactly been actively searching for one, but I can never find them to fit me UNTIL NOW! They also sell belts for regular size people. I found this great place online Continue Reading Fantastic Belts And Belt Buckles!…